Sebelius: We don’t know what ObamaCare costs will be

Ed MorrisseyPosted at 11:36 am on April 23, 2010

Think of this as a companion piece to the sudden recognition that massive government interventions cost more than they save. On Wednesday, Kathleen Sebelius appeared before the House Appropriations Committee to discuss the appropriations for high-risk pool subsidies that ObamaCare provides to the states. The bill appropriated $5 billion for this program, but as Sebelius tells the committee, that was just a spit-balling number. In reality, no one has the faintest clue how much money will actually get spent on this program, via Breitbart TV and Naked Emperor News:

CMS is the actuary for Medicare and Medicaid, which warned that the forecasting in ObamaCare was hopelessly optimistic, and this appears to be one of those areas in which they’ll be proven right more quickly than most. The states will face billions of dollars each in new mandated Medicaid spending. What’s the likelihood of them not joining a subsidy program to cover high-risk enrollees? About the same probability of Obama scheduling a prime-time press conference tonight or skipping his golf game tomorrow. Not only will the $5 billion disappear twice as fast as Sebelius and the Obama administration predicted, it may go even faster than that.

But don’t worry — Congress knew exactly what they were doing when they passed the bill. Riiiiiiiiiiiight.